Sunday, 21 October 2012

A minor mystery

Since the recent unpleasantness with Alison Sauer, I have been puzzling something over in my mind and it is this. As soon as I came across reference to the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for the compulsory registration and monitoring of home education, I felt that I should alert others to what was in the wind. I read about the plans on the night of August 4th and then posted about them the following morning. At that time, there had been no mention of this on any of the lists such as HE-UK or EO. Even Fiona Nicholson seemed to have missed it. As soon as I mentioned it here, on the morning of August 5th, others picked it up and started spreading the word to various lists and forums. I found this deliciously ironic, that I, who am viewed by some as the arch-enemy of home education, should be the one to tip people the wink about this development!

Once I had mentioned it, the news spread like wildfire and is of course now being talked about everywhere. I dare say that this would have happened soon anough, even without my intervention; I am not taking credit for that! Here is the mystery though. Soon after I had posted about this, Alison Sauer came on here and commented scathingly about several minor errors in what I had said. She seemed very tetchy with me and, I thought, annoyed to see the Welsh proposals being talked about. Judging from her comments, she knew all about the thing, certainly she knew far more about it than I did. Yet she had not said a word about this on any of the lists to which she belongs and if it had not been for my mentioning it, I gained the impression that Alison Sauer would have sat on the news herself. Why should this be? Why did it take me to alert home educators to what was going on, when Alison Sauer already knew all about it? I am puzzled by this and would be interested to hear of any theories.

'What happened to the blog post from last week, entitled "Alison Sauer"?'

I am not a vindictive man. Having made my point in cases of this sort and drawn attention to the awful behaviour of the individual concerned, I generally delete such posts after a week or so. This is because many people come here looking for information and debates about home education. They will learn little from posts of that sort denouncing somebody of whom they may not even have heard!

I felt it hardly necessary to point this out, really. A vindictive man, discovering that an online campaign of harassment and intimidation was being organised against him, might have remembered the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The fact that I have let Alison Sauer get away with this is a sign of my magnanimity. There are certainly those who, seeing their home address linked in messages to words like 'bomb', might have gone beetling off to the police about it.

A non-vindictive man might have ignored the deletion of an email that contained only the name, location and occupation of the briefing paper author, writing it off as an error of judgement or at worst a petty attempt at point scoring that was best ignored. But no, you instead claimed that their ‘real motive for all this of course, is to prevent discussion of her claims’, despite the fact that the deleted email contained nothing about those claims and your emails that do discuss the claims are still available on list!

You decided that you should launch an investigation into the author's background and to write two posts specifically about this. These posts caused the escalation into the 'online campaign of harassment' you describe. Selectively quoting 'bomb' instead of ‘bomb Simon's site' is pathetic too. No, of course you're not vindictive...

'You decided that you should launch an investigation into the author's background'

I love this! One can imagine me staring at the documents on my desk and then pressing a buzzer on the intercom linking me to my personal assistant. 'Miss Smitth,' I would say, 'I have decided to launch an investigation into the background of Mrs Charles-Warner. I want you to alert our best men and get them on the case at once."

This is so spectacularly silly, that it is hard to know where to begin. Is 'launching an investigation into somebody's background' how most people see their actions when they come across a name and google it? I will definitely have to remember to use this expression in future; it makes me sound very grand.

Possibly, although I am not sure if everybody would agree. Saying, 'let's bomb his site' also sounds a little aggressive to me, but perhaps this is the sort of idiom which you yourself use in ordinary life.

'This is so spectacularly silly, that it is hard to know where to begin. Is 'launching an investigation into somebody's background' how most people see their actions when they come across a name and google it? I will definitely have to remember to use this expression in future; it makes me sound very grand.'

But that is exactly your writing style. Don't deny the pomposity. Embrace it!

"This is so spectacularly silly, that it is hard to know where to begin. Is 'launching an investigation into somebody's background' how most people see their actions when they come across a name and google it?"

So when you said, "Saying, 'let's bomb his site' also sounds a little aggressive to me," what 'site' did you think they were talking about? Do you have a building site that you think they actually intended to blow up with a bomb? Because I read it as 'bombing' you blog with comments (which is what happened).

I am always enchanted at the way that those commenting here manage to twist the discussion away from the topic of the post, which in this case was why Alison Sauer did not alert people to the plans of the Welsh Assembly, even though she knew all about them long before I did.

That's a bit of a non-starter as a discussion since we have no way of knowing if she knew about the Welsh Assembly plans before you, and if so, how long before. I know you specialise in specuation and thinking the worst of those you've taken a dislike to, but not everyone does this (even if they do have doubts about that person's past actions).

'That's a bit of a non-starter as a discussion since we have no way of knowing if she knew about the Welsh Assembly plans before you'

Why, indeed we do. A few hours after I posted about this on August 5th, Alison Sauer commented here, saying:

'Over the months following the summer break (not in September) the Welsh assembly government will present several bills, one of which is an Education Bill. They are proposing (it's a bill, not an Act that has been passed) something to do with registration of Home Educators. There will be a consultation before the bill is introduced (which we understand will be in September)'

Note the mysterious 'we' which has lately crept into Alison Sauer's messages! I have no idea who this 'we' might be. She talks of the consultation, about which I knew nothing and the general tone is not that of a woman who only leanred of the thing when I talked of it a couple of hours earlier.

'So when you said, "Saying, 'let's bomb his site' also sounds a little aggressive to me," what 'site' did you think they were talking about? Do you have a building site that you think they actually intended to blow up with a bomb? Because I read it as 'bombing' you blog with comments (which is what happened).'

Several points need to be borne in mind. Some of the comments that were posted by Alison Sauer and her dupes were very crude. I was not bothered when people started to speculate about the size of my penis and the length of time it took me to ejaculate during masturbation by a prostitute, but some people were. I had a number of private emails from people who are not great fans of mine, begging me to delete some comments like this, because they gave a bad impression of home education. Alison Sauer actually asked people to make sure that their messages were as scatological as possible. She asked people to leave 'smelly messages; surely a reference to shit? This tied in with her request to people to have manure delivered to my home.

The second point is that Alison Sauer's urging people to 'bomb' my site has resulted in quite a bit of mischief. She circulated my home address, urging people to arrange for deliveries which would inconvenience me, some of those to whom she was talking were suggesting sabotaging my personal email account by signing me up to all sorts of random things, just to be a nuisance to me. Others were asking the names of my relatives, with a view to harassing them as well. I think that you know perfectly well that I don't mind any sort of comments here; that's shy I don't moderate. This was not all that Alison Sauer was encouraging people to do.

Sorry, I am not sure if I understand you. When Alison Sauer said a couple of hours after I posted about the Welsh plans for registration and so on, that she and others understood that there was to be a consultataion in September, you don't think that this suggests that she already knew about the Welsh proposals before I posted about them? Have I got that right?

Someone has already told you that they had heard about it from friends in Wales before you mentioned it, so it would hardly be earth shattering news if she had. And I had found similar information via Google after reading your post and before reading Alison's. Given this, I don't think that assuming that someone knew about something long before others based purely on tone is reasonably, no. I'm not ruling it out, but it's hardly the basis for a discussion.

' Have you really not even heard such ' letting of stream' conversations before?'

That would be more convincing if I was not now receiving nuisance mail and communications through the post and via email; both of which began after Alison Sauer had started this nonsense on Facebook. She hoped to initiate a campaign of harassment and that if what is happening.

And there's no way this could have anything to do with you publishing your email address as a clickable link at the same time, just ripe for email address harvesting software? I made this mistake once and ended up receiving over a thousand spam messages a day! Good luck with that! And still not comparable to a bomb.

'And there's no way this could have anything to do with you publishing your email address as a clickable link at the same time'

Judging by the very specific nature of what is being sent, no. I am not going to go into too much detail, because obviously if it continues, then I shall have to take some steps to stop this nuisance. Fortunately, I have the names and details of all those who were involved in the exchange of messages last week and so will be able to do something about it if need be. That is my problems though; I was simply pointing out that Alison Sauer has actually intitiated a campaign of this sort and that the things that those to whom she was speaking were saying were evidently not meant as jokes.

Simon said,"When Alison Sauer said a couple of hours after I posted about the Welsh plans for registration and so on, that she and others understood that there was to be a consultataion in September, you don't think that this suggests that she already knew about the Welsh proposals before I posted about them?"

More lies from Simon. It was nearly six hours before Alison replied with more accurate information and this was 2 hours after this information had been provided on another public forum.